View Settings

Contents

Any data entered into a Formidable form can be displayed on your site using Views. Learn about what the Basic and Advanced settings do so you can accomplish more with your Views. If you’re ready to create a View, you may follow these step-by-step instructions.

Basic Settings

Use Entries from Form: Select the form that contains the data you would like to display.

View Format: You can display All Entries, a Single Entry, Both (Dynamic), or a Calendar in your View.

All Entries: List all entries from the specified form. Choose this option if you do not want a detailed page for each entry. Any text you add to the “Content” box will automatically be repeated for each entry.

Single Entry: Only display one entry. Set an Order or add a Filter in the Advanced Setting section to determine which entry will display. Under “Order”, you may select random, entry creation date, entry update date, or any of your fields. Then you need to select “Ascending” or “Descending”. If you select “Entry creation date – Descending”, then only the most recent entry will be displayed. If you select “Random”, then a random entry will be displayed every time the page is visited or refreshed. If you would like to use a filter to determine which entry should be displayed, you can add a filter which says “Entry ID is equal to 12345″, where 12345 is the ID of the entry you want to display.

Both (Dynamic): List all entries that will link to a more detailed single entry page. When you select this option, a Detail Link section will appear. Learn how to use this in the Detail Link section. The “Content” box should be used to add all the field entries you would like listed and the “Dynamic Content” box is for the detailed single entry. The text in the “Content” box will be repeated for each entry. See the demo site for an example of a Dynamic View.

Calendar: Show entries in a calendar format. Each event on your calendar can be turned into a link to a more detailed single entry page. When you select this option, four dropdowns will appear.

Event Date: Determines where an event will appear on the calendar. For example, if you select “Entry Creation date” from this dropdown and you create an entry on March 1st, 2013, the entry will appear on your calendar on March 1st, 2013. If you have any date fields in your form connected to this View, you can select a date field from the dropdown.

End Date or Day Count: Determines when each event will end, if you want to allow multi-day events. If you have a second date field or a number field in your form, you can select this from the dropdown.

Repeat: Determines the period for any repeating events. If you would like to have repeating events, select a dropdown or radio button field from your form that contains values like “Daily”, “Weekly”, “Monthly”, or “Yearly”. If you want more repeat options, just check the “Use separate values” option for this field. Then you can add text like “Every other week” with a saved value of “+2 weeks” or even just “2 weeks”. Here’s an example of what your dropdown/radio button field may look like:

End Repeat: Determines the end date for any repeating events. If you have repeating events and you would like to set an end date for some or all of the repeating events, select the date field which will determine the end date for the repeating event.

See the demo site for an example of a calendar View. Any text added to the “Content” box will be used for each date on the calendar that includes an entry. The “Dynamic Content” box is for the single entry.

Detail Link: This option will only appear if you selected Both (Dynamic) or Calendar for your View Format. This helps you build the url for the detailed entry pages. In the Parameter Name box, add the text which you would like to add on to the end of your site url. The Parameter Value dropdown allows you to select the entry ID or key, which will also add on to the end of your site url. For example, if you type “jobdetails” in the Parameter Name box and select ID for the Parameter Value, your url for the detailed entry page would look like: http://example.com/job-listings/?jobdetails=1309. The ID number on the end is specific to each detailed entry page. If you select Key for the Parameter Value, the ID (1309 in this example) would be replaced with the key which you can optionally define when you edit or create an entry.

Content

The Content section is where you can insert fields from your form, text, shortcodes, HTML, etc. that will be displayed in your View. This section will be repeated for each entry in your View. You may present the entries from your form as a table, list, calendar, or any other format using text, HTML, and CSS. If you insert table HTML in your View, you will need to check the option to “Disable the visual editor for this view” in order to prevent the table HTML from being stripped. The Customization panel in the right sidebar contains links and buttons which will help you insert fields and other shortcodes in your View content. For some examples of what you can do with Views, take a look at some demos.

Before and After Content

These boxes are optional, but the Before section is a good place to put styling or javascript that will apply to your entire View.

Dynamic Content

If Both (Dynamic) or Calendar is selected as the View Format, a second large text box titled “Dynamic Content” will appear below the After Content box. The Dynamic Content box can use all the same shortcodes and conditional statements that the Content box uses. This box is for the detailed single entry page.

Advanced Settings

Order: Order your displayed entries by any field, entry creation date, entry update date, or randomly rotate. If you have a Single Entry View Format, you can randomly switch between entries each time the page is refreshed.

Filter Entries: Limit which entries are shown. For example, if you would like the current user to only see the entries they submitted, set the User ID field equal to the Current User (you must have a User ID field in your form for this to work).

If you would like to display entries with a date that is in the future, set your date field to be greater than NOW.

This will not display entries with today’s date. You can also show entries from any date range. For example, to show entries for the upcoming week, add two rows: “Date field is greater than NOW” and “Date field is less than +1 week”.

Limit: Limit the total number of entries displayed in your View. Leave blank if you would like all entries shown.

Page Size: Split your View into pages by setting a page size. Enter the number of entries you would like displayed on each page in the Page Size box.

Message if nothing to display: Enter the message you would like users to see if there are no entries to display.

Insert View: If you would like to insert your View into a page automatically, then select where you would like it to appear: After page content, Before page content, or Replace page content. A dropdown will then appear allowing you to select which page you would like it to appear on. Otherwise, select “Don’t insert automatically” and insert the View shortcode on a post, page, or widget. This shortcode can be found in the right sidebar panel titled “Publish”.

You may select when your View will be loaded on a page by using the Insert Position field. If you choose 1, the View will be called first when the page is loading. If you enter a higher number, this will force the View to load after other elements. If your View is not showing up, enter a higher number in this field.